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Congratulations Adam on finishing. I keep meaning to try and start again, but never quite manage to get around to it. One of these days... That said, the local film festival starts next week, and one of the films I'll be seeing is The Freshman, with a live orchestra - particularly exciting for...

Adam - Glad you enjoyed Charade. It is a brilliant film. I'm a big fan of Hitchcock, but his lighter comedy-thriller films (like To Catch A Thief) never work for me. By contrast, Charade feels very much like the film Hitchcock wanted to make but never quite managed to. The whole film is...

I really should see The Kid. I have two Chaplin pictures on my wall, both from the film (one with Chaplin and the kid sitting on a step, and one of Chaplin and the kid looking around a corner with a policeman standing behind them), and I really love these photos, but I've never seen the film...

Congratulations, Adam.

Don't do that - I don't think I have updated my list to include the most recent list yet.

Even if it is a bit difficult to believe they could put on a show of that size in a barn. I seem to remember the size of some numbers would test a largish theatre.

Congratulations. I really need to start working on seeing these films again.

Congratulations on ending the Passions list. I really need to try and find the time to start watching these films again - it's been months since I last managed to watch an AFI List film.

I really need to find some time to start watching these films again, and when I do, I'm going to start with Sophie's choice - simply because I am worried about discovering what the choice is before I see the film. This year for the first year, I've managed to get the actual AFI List broadcast...

I really need to try starting to watch some of the AFI Films again - I just have not had the time for months now, and I miss the excitement of it. Sabrina is a great film - Billy Wilder is great doing dark and cynical, but films like Sabrina show he has lightness of touch when needed...

One of the things I love about Fargo is that they really go hard to make it feel real. I especially love that they make Marge eight-months pregnant - and it never once comes into the plot. She doesn't have an unexpected birth in the investigation, or any of the theatrics we would expect in any...

It's been years since I saw the Rathbone films - I must try and see them again. If I remember correctly, aren't Hound and Adventures the only ones actually set in Victorian London? I think the rest of them were all set in the then-modern setting of WW2-England, with Holmes prone to spouting...

I haven't seen Private Benjamin for years - I must see that again, to see what I think of it today. I remember watching the TV series as a kid, and when I did see it, it was not long after rewatching reruns of the show - and I was comparing the two and didn't like the film as a result. But it...

I would say, break down and watch them. Here in NZ, there are six Laughs films that are completely unavailable full stop, in either VHS or DVD. So you're in better position than I am. Wow, it has been tough in the past few months to find time to watch anything. I did manage to watch Mary...

Maybe, but I think I'll try and watch it anyway. The point of this challenge is to watch the films that are listed, and if I don't watch the 1936 version, I won't have done that. It's also annoying becuase I've been finding it so hard lately to squeeze any AFI films in, that when you do watch...

DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just assumed... You mean I need to find another version and watch it. Damn. I have to sit through that awful story again? Wait a minute. You mean they filmed that story twice? Why? Oh well. Maybe I'll enjoy the other version more. James Whale as director...

Show Boat Really not a fan. Watching the film, it didn't really seem to know what it wanted to be. It starts out looking like a romantic love story between a gambler and a girl raised on the show boat, then for a moment it almost looks like being a discussion about racial attitudes, before...

Sounds good. I wish I could see it. Porgy and Bess is an opera, so the operatic tone of the songs doesn't surprise me. I've only seen it on stage once, and that was ten years ago, so I can't really remember the plot at all, but I don't remember being too impressed with it. But then, the plots...

Picnic William Holden arrives as a stranger in small town USA, reconnects with an old college friend, and finds himself attending the town's Labour Day picnic, encountering many of the town's residents and characters, including his friend's girlfriend. And his presence slowly brings out the...

What's Up, Doc? Peter Bogdanovich paid tribute to the great screwball comedies with What's Up, Doc? And the end result it pretty damned enjoyable. Sure, it's insanely contrived, even more so than most screwball comedies (and the genre is known for its absurd contrivance), but a nice sparking...

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Steve McQueen stars as the wealthy bored titular character that plans and executes a bank robbery, just for the thrill and fn of it. Faye Dunaway, as the insurance investigator, quickly realises that he was the man behind the caper, and so the two begin to dance...

That is true.

I've updated my main post with the Cheers list. I'll also just throw in a short comment about Philadelphia, which I saw a couple of weeks ago - and which I see is in the Cheers list. It's a good, solid, well-made etertaining film that I enjoyed. And Street of Philadelphia is a good song...

The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin gives a great dual performance in this 1940 film, both as a Jewish barber, and as Adenoid Hynkel, a dictator who, if you pay attention to the subtle clues contained in the film, you may notice was inspired in part by Adolf Hitler. The film is completely...

OK, that's interesting. Thanks for that clarification, Adam.

Song of the South SotS is a live-action-animated hybrid film about a young boy who goes to live at his father's childhood home, and cannot cope at all well, what with bullying and missing his father and the like. But down there, he meets Uncle Remus, whose sories about Brer Rabbit outwitting...

Silver Streak Sometimes, you watch a film and find yourself thinking "What were the AFI thinking?" That is how I reacted to Silver Streak. Gene Wilder stars as a book editor who falls in love with the assistant to a prominent art historian. The girl's employer is murdered, Wilder is thrown...

The Big Chill Now that was a great film. A group of friends come together for the funeral of one of their number, and stay together for the weekend. And as they talk, and drink, and do drugs, and have sex, they start to examine their lives, where they are, whether they are where they want to...

The Producers is one of my absolute favourite comedies. It's not perfect, and some parts don't really work (LSD in particular dates the film a bit too much, although his Love Power song is funny), but most of it works, and works at a comedic level that I am in awe of every time I watch it...

The good thing about holidays is that, after a few months of not watching anything on the Lists, I can find the time to start again. Yay! Sleeper Woody Allen stars as a guy who is frozen unknowingly, and is awoken 200 years later in a police state by an underground revolution that needs...